Is there a program that will lock my text consoles for me if I'm idle
for a while? Something like:
while !KeyboardInterrupt /* nobody's typing */
sleep 5m /* OK, they're really gone forever */
clear
vlock --all
Or something. xlock with the timer but without the X.

this would be nice, but it would have to run in the background
unattached to the tty, I don't think vlock will work properly if its
started that way..

just as a quick test i tried:
[eb@plato ~]$ vlock &

and i my console was instantly being spewed with Password: prompts
over and over again, I had to switch to another console and kill it
:( (hint: when playing with vlock don't use -a, unless you have a
way in though the network, be prepared to press the reset button and
fsck your filesystems to hell)

maybe if you ran a script in the foreground on another console you
don't use but then it would probably see it as idle...

also what would it do if you were running a interactive program like say lftp?
Ethan